The challenges associated with using performance measurement to steer transport policy towards sustainability include general aspects of measuring sustainability of transport systems with indicators as well as specific national and institutional conditions for adopting and responding to the information produced by such sustainability indicator systems. Japan is interesting in these regards, since the country has adopted strategies for achieving a more sustainable transport situation, as well as frameworks of policy performance measurement and management. The paper will describe a general framework for reviewing sustainable transport policy performance measurement and will apply it to Japanese transport policy, with a focus on two specific cases. The framework is based in current scholarly literature on performance indicators to support sustainable transport policy and more general literature on performance measurement. The information of Japanese cases is obtained by review of key policy documents, reports and academic papers and through a series of semi-structured interviews with experts and officials in Japan. The paper combines insights from two ongoing research projects supported by the Strategic Research Council of Denmark, ‘SUSTAIN – National Transport Planning’ , and ‘Drivers & Limits. Transport - possible contributions to climate change.’